short and to the point. This rhyme scheme is widely used in
songs today, mostly pop songs where they have a regular
rythym.
La Belle Dame Sans Merci means ' The Beautiful Woman
With No Mercy' in English, and it is about a knight who meets
a lady out in a meadow
(meads). He seems to fall in love with her and does
everything for her, like make her garlands and necklaces.
" I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone "
She gives him food and drink and he goes to sleep, waking up
later to find himself on a cold hill side surrounded by ghostly
figures of other princes and knights who are possibly earlier
loves of this woman, whom this knight calls a faery`s child.
This name gives the woman a sense of enchantment, and
places a mysterious aura around her. The rhyme scheme is
abcb, with the third and last lines ending in a similar sounding
word, e.g stanza 4 - child, wild. This is rather significant,
because it shows that he is getting to be besotted by her, and
he does not know.
The first themes that i will be looking at are Obsession and
Anger. These two are closely related in the Poison Tree
poem, yet not as close in La Belle Dame Sans Merci. In the
poison tree, the speaker is obsessed with nurturing his wrath
until it is ready to be released on his foe. Although we are not
told what has been done to make the speaker feel angry, we
are soon pulled into the thick of it, thanks to Blakes style of
imaginative writing.
The wrath is shown to be almost real, like a plant being
nurtured and cared for, growing from a small, insignificant
seed, until it reaches its full and fatal point of growth, the
culmination of his anger ends up with his foe dead, with no
feelings of guilt or remorse from the speaker. The fruit given
by the tree usually means a new start, but here it does not.
Here it means the end of a problem, rather than a new
beginning.
When Keats writes that the foe ' steals ' into the garden
under a ' veil`d pole ' its gives a very careful sense of
concealment, like the foe does not want to be discovered on
his enemies grounds. The poem structure itself is also quite
deceiving, like the speaker of the poem. It seems to be
ssimply set out, but if you delve deeper into the poem, you
discover that it is multi layered, and quite complex like a rubik
cube, and nearly the same with twists and turns.
In La Belle Dame Sans Merci however, the obsession lies
with the knight for the mysterious lady. He may be under
some sort of enchantment though, as he did mention that she
had an unearthly beauty and looked like a faery`s child which
may explain her choice of food ' relish sweet and manna dew'.
At the end of each poem, there is a resemblence to being
poisoned. In The Poison Tree, the foe has been poisoned by
the fruit bourne out of the speakers anger, but in La Belle
Dame Sans Merci, the knight may have been unintentionally
poisoned by the strange food, and that could be why the
ghostly figures are around him. The lady may be used to this
food, but the knight may not.
There is not much anger in La Belle, but the knights almost
silent stature at the start of the poem may be silent rage,
maybe because he was tricked by the lady and deeply
resenting it because he has such a high opinion of himself. I
found a quotation from John Keats which may have influenced
him about writing this poem
* HE is ne`er crowned with Immortality, But fails to go where
Airy voices Lead.
Anger is the predominant emotion set out in The Poison Tree,
and I think that with out anger in human society, then order
would not exist. Anger has been with us for as long as we can
remember, from the Norman conquests, through to the
Demolition Of the Berlin Wall and recently the Wars on
Terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I digress, and now
back to the poem.
I will now look at the themes of Infatuation and Love in the
two poems.
In the poison tree, there is not much of a theme of love,
except the fact that the speaker does love watching his anger
hurt the foe. Love can come in many forms, but this love is a
sadistic form of the emotion, where he gets pleasure from the
other person's pain. Infatuation plays a big role in The Poison
Tree, as the speaker is seemingly obsessed with growing and
nurturing his anger like a plant, his infatuation with this
practice will have extreme concequences on his foe.
I think that love is one of, if not the, most important aspect in
La Belle. The knight seems to be in love with the lady, but this
can be questioned by Keats use of language, referring to
mythological beings, ' faery`s '. The knight may have been
under the influence of a type of enchantment from this lady,
as he does act illogically for a knight, making necklaces and
garlands. This lady does not seem to fit the standard
stereotypical ' damsel in distress ', simply because although
beautiful, she has a very clear and definate aura of mystery
about her.
The structure of The Poison Tree almost mirrors / reflects the
dark and sadistic mood of the poem, because the short simple
verses and rhyme make a sense of secrecy and possibly guilt
about what is going to happen, almost as if the speaker is
talking in short, gasping breaths. The enjambement on the first
line of the last stanza gives a sense of urgency, like the foe is
uneasy being on the speakers grounds.
Also, because this last stanza happens at night, it gives an
image of this man going into the garden to get away from the
throes of life, maybe to escape his problems by seeking
refuge in unknown territory.
Personally, i think that both Keats and Blake have done an
extremely good job of writing these poems, as the language
conjures fantastic images, and each poem offers an insight
into the minds of these great writers. I prefer The Poison Tree
poem, simply because I understand it more. I have felt at
times in my life, that I would like nothing more than to watch
someone suffer at my hand, but I have always resisted the
temptation.